New York City settles a slew of lawsuits stemming from mass arrests of protesters.

THE STAKES:

Public officials anywhere tempted to repeat this mistake should consider the true cost.

There are two ways to look at the $18 million that New York City has agreed to pay to settle dozens of lawsuits stemming from mass arrests made during the 2004 Republican National Convention.

The right way would be for the city of New York, and any other government — local, state or federal — to see that such an inexcusable assault on civil liberties has a price.

The wrong way would be for public officials to think it's a bargain. Because beyond the dollars, the real cost is immeasurably greater.

More than 1,800 people were arrested during the 2004 convention — protesters, journalists, legal observers, and ordinary citizens who said they were simply walking along a street when they were swept up in the mass arrests. The New York Civil Liberties Union says many were herded into filthy cells set up in a former bus depot on a pier on the Hudson River. More than 400 individuals filed claims, and another 1,200 initiated a class action.

A federal judge in 2012 ruled that one of the mass arrests — of 226 people on a sidewalk — was unconstitutional, and rejected the city's claim that another sweep of 400 people was permissible. The city finally agreed earlier this month to settle.

As victories go, this one is bittersweet. While the plaintiffs will get an average of $6,400, that seems like paltry compensation for having one's constitutional rights violated and being unlawfully held for hours in a foul-smelling cell, a scenario that sounds more like it happened in a petty dictatorship than a nation founded on the notion of unalienable rights.

Here's another insult: a bit of this money will come out of their own pockets, since this is, after all, taxpayers' money, not former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's or ex-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's. In the same vein, since New York City receives state and federal aid, we'll all bear the burden, even in small measure, for this abhorrent exercise of judgment.

This isn't just a New York City phenomenon. We witnessed a similar abrogation of rights here in Albany at the height of the Occupy movement in 2011, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo had State Police arrest dozens of protesters for violating an ad-hoc curfew. Fortunately, Albany County District Attorney David Soares appreciated how offensive the arrests were to the rights of free speech and peaceful assembly, and refused to prosecute.

Yet there are no doubt plenty of overzealous and less enlightened officials whose take-away from the New York City settlement will be that it's OK to shut down a protest now and settle later.

They should heed the lessons that Mr. Soares knew without having to being told by a court: Depriving citizens of their constitutional rights merely because a public official finds a protest undesirable or untidy is wrong. It is, in a word, illegal.

And the damage it does to public trust in their institutions of government can never be seen as just another cost of doing business.